Sunday, 12 April 2009

2009 O2C Doeberl Cup - Chess 960

Last night saw the running of the O2C Doeberl Cup Chess 960 event. It was a fun evening of chess, although there was $1000 in prizes to battle over.The tournament was run under lightning chess rules (illegal moves lose etc), although as the arbiter I was a little lenient on illegal castling, as this is probably the most confusing aspect of Chess960 (Fischer Random). At the start of eache round Fritz960 generated a starting position which was displayed on a screen in the tournament hall. The a minute of AC/DC or Midnight Oil was played over the sound system while the players set up their boards, and then the round began.The tournament turned into a battle between two groups. In one corner were the Sydney Chess 960 experts, led by Blair Mandla, Neil Wright and George Xie. In the other were the group of Indian IM's who seemed not to have played it much before, but came to grips with it very quickly. At the halfway point it looked like the Sydney crew would take home the money, but the Indian's finished the stronger to capture the top 3 places.The winner was IM Swyangsu Satyapragyan with 7.5/9. Half a point behind were IM Sriram Jha, IM K Rathnakaran, and Blair Mandla.Full standings will be at www.doeberlcup.com.au later this morning.